Some triggers, toggles, and guages for zMUD

Here are a few helpful triggers and such that you can set up in zMUD. All should work fine in version 6.16, however I have no idea how compatible they are with earlier versions. Unless I am badly mistaken, all are perfectly clean as far as "help robot" is concerned, as they only concern themselves with helping to keep track of character changes and dealing with minor annoyances. I am assuming some basic affinity with the game and with Zmud here, so while I'll try to explain things as simply as possible, it is important that you have the ability to trouble-shoot any problems.

While scripts and triggers are quite helpful, make sure to read "help robot" before playing around with them. Ignorance will not protect you from banishment or removal if your character becomes too automated.

Always log everything

If you want to have a record of everything that happens, you can have zMUD start logging whenever you connect to the mud. Create an alias for "atconnect", and put in a value of "#lo batmud.txt". You can also log only specific events or windows, consult the zMUD manual for more information on how to do this.

Experience counter:

Here is a fairly basic trigger for monitoring experience. When set up properly, it will echo any change in your unspent experience. Among other things, this is useful for informing exactly how much any given kill has earned you and how much exploration is producing. It will also highlight any unexpected losses due to things like energy drain spells or newbie orbs. It functions on a once second delay so that any spam related to a monster's death can take place before the echo. Batmud's short score has a feature similar to this, however I think this trigger is more elegant.

1. Set up your prompt or short score to display your current experience so that zMUD will have a regular means for checking your experience. If you don't know how do do this, read "help prompt" in game. As it is set up in this example, the counter will look for the pattern: Exp:<exp>

2. Create the variables "expone" and "exptwo". You can do this in the variables section of zmud or simply by entering "#variable expone 0" (example).

3. Create a new trigger, and place this in the pattern section:

Exp:(%d)

4. In the value section enter:



#math expone (%1-@exptwo)
#if @expone<>0 {#alarm +0:0:01 {#ECHO Experience: <@Expone>}}
exptwo=%1

Autosave Trigger:

A nice simple trigger that will save your character every five minutes, beginning 30 seconds after your session starts. Just enter the code at the prompt. Read Zmud's help on the #alarm command if you want to learn more.

#ALARM -*:*5:30 {save}

Shape Liting:

This set of triggers will color code the condition of a monster or player. They can be pasted directly into the mud prompt. Note that these colors are for use with a black background, if you use another background color, you may wish to alter them.


#TRIGGER {is in excellent shape.} {#cw 3} "Shape liting"
#TRIGGER {is in a good shape.} {#cw 11} "Shape liting"
#TRIGGER {is slightly hurt.} {#cw 2} "Shape liting"
#TRIGGER {is noticeably hurt.} {#cw 10} "Shape liting"
#TRIGGER {is not in a good shape.} {#cw 6} "Shape liting"
#TRIGGER {is in bad shape.} {#cw 14} "Shape liting"
#TRIGGER {is in very bad shape.} {#cw 4} "Shape liting"
#TRIGGER {is near death.} {#cw 12} "Shape liting"

Below are examples of what the shape liting should look like. They may not show up properly on older browsers.

Presence Eternal the legendary Elf.
	She is in excellent shape.
	She is in a good shape.
	She is slightly hurt.
	She is noticeably hurt.
	She is not in a good shape.
	She is in bad shape.
	She is in very bad shape.
	She is near death.

Vital Gauges:

Setting up some vital gauges to monitor statistics such as hit points and spell points can be a bit trickier than managing basic triggers. You'll need to produce a customized short score and set of triggers that work in tandem with each other. The result is a set of colored bars for easy reference.

1. First you will need to set up some variables to store everything in. I'm not very creative, so I named mine HPVAR, MHPVAR, SPVAR, MSPVAR, EPVAR, MEPVAR. One for each of the three vital statistics, and one for their maximum value.

2. Now you need to set up your short score. You may wish to designate things by a silly name so input from other players won't interfere with the gauges, but it's never been a problem for me. If you like you can use this standard bit:

sc set Hp:<hp>/<maxhp> Ep:<ep>/<maxep> Sp:<sp>/<maxsp>

3. Next a trigger will be needed to capture these values every time they are displayed. You simply need to make a new trigger and enter the following in the pattern section, which will capture everything automatically.

Hp:&HpVar/&MHpVar Ep:&EpVar/&MEpVar Sp:&SpVar/&MSpVar

4. Now to create the first gauge. Create a new "button" and set the type as gauge. I suggest the "caption" contain the following code:


Hit Points: @HpVar / @MHpVar

5. The above caption determines what text will appear in the gauge. To actually make the gauge function you'll want to select the "gauge" option of the button menu. Set the "value" to @HPVAR, the "Gauge Max" to @MHPVAR, and if you want the gauge to change colors when it gets very low, you can either set "Gauge Low" to a specific number, OR you can put in something like @MHPVAR/4, in which case the color will change whenever you hit 25% of your max hitpoints. Be sure to set the colors you'll want to be using.

6. To finish things off, you need to tinker with the position and size of your new gauge. Logically, this is in the "position/size" section of the button editing menu. I personally suggest that you set the "location" to the bottom of panel 2, which should display the bar just under your command prompt. If you don't like the automatic sizing and positioning of the gauge, you will need to turn those options off and play around with the settings until you are happy. The autoplacing feature seems particularly prone to error when multiple gauges are being used.